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Rice Rissoles
3 ounces of rice 2 ounces grated horse-radish 1/2 teaspoon mustard 3 tablespoons of cream 1/2 a pint of milk Juice of 1/4 lemon Pepper and salt Cook the rice in the milk for forty-five minutes, and add the grated horse-radish. Mix the mustard with the cream and seasoning; add all together, and mix well, and form into rissoles. Roll in rusk crumbs, and fry in boiling oil till a golden brown. Serve with brown gravy.
A soft rice croquette carried entirely by horseradish and mustard. The whole thing hinges on the mixture being cold and stiff before you shape it.
- Chill before shapingRice cooked in milk for 45 minutes is a loose porridge, and it will not hold a shape warm. Spread it in a shallow dish and refrigerate until firm — an hour at minimum, and it is better overnight — before forming the rissoles.
- The measurements3 ounces of rice is a scant half cup dry; half a pint in a British book of this period is 10 fluid ounces, so about 1 1/4 cups of milk. A short or medium grain rice will break down and bind best; long grain holds its shape more and the rissoles are likelier to crumble.
- Two ounces of horseradish is a great dealRoughly a quarter to a third of a cup of freshly grated root for a mixture this size, and fresh root is far hotter than the jarred, vinegared kind. Start with half, taste the cold mixture, and add more. If you are using prepared horseradish, drain it well or the extra liquid will loosen the rice.
- MustardIn a British book of this period this almost certainly means English mustard powder, mixed to a paste — here, with the cream. Half a teaspoon of powder is not the same heat as half a teaspoon of jarred Dijon; powder is the closer substitute.
- Rusk crumbsRusk is a twice-baked dry bread, and its crumbs are drier and coarser than fresh breadcrumbs. Panko is the nearest thing on a modern shelf; dried, sieved breadcrumbs also work. For a coating that stays on, flour the rissoles, dip in beaten egg, then crumb.
- Boiling oilOil does not boil at frying temperature — this is period shorthand for hot deep fat. Aim for 350–375F. Below that the crumb soaks; above it the outside colours before the cold centre has warmed through.
- Brown gravy without meatIf you want to keep the dish meatless, make a brown sauce from onions browned slowly in butter and flour cooked to a dark roux, then vegetable stock, with a little mushroom ketchup or soy for depth.
- YieldEnough for about eight small rissoles, serving two or three as a main course with a vegetable.
Meatless cookbooks proliferated in Britain and America around the First World War, when meat was scarce, expensive or rationed outright, and they sit at the junction of wartime thrift and an older vegetarian movement that had been publishing since the middle of the nineteenth century. The rissole was an obvious vehicle: the word comes through French from a root meaning to redden or brown, and by the Victorian period it meant any seasoned mixture bound, crumbed and fried, most often a way of using up cold cooked meat. Substituting rice for that meat was a small step, but it left the cook with a bland core, which is why this recipe leans so hard on horseradish, mustard and lemon — the sharp flavours are doing the work that meat would otherwise do. Rusk crumbs, called for here rather than breadcrumbs, were a standard larder item in the period and were also sold commercially as a filler for sausages, another echo of the dish this one is standing in for.